I’m not particular as to what it’s called. It’s the cause and the “what next” step that I’m not as sure of. There is a community of organizers and fund-raisers who make their living creating fear, “give now or the (insert endangered thing here) will be forever gone”; I don’t think creating fear is any way to make rational decisions. I believe we should make decisions based on science not on panic. We know that warm times and ice ages occurred before humans arrived on the earth; why? We know that CO2 increased during those warm times; why? And, according to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics the “greenhouse effect” doesn’t exist. Toss in primitive computer models that aren’t much better than what Svante Arrhenius quantitatively described as the “greenhouse effect” in 1896.

[Arrhenius's] calculations showed that the “temperature of the Arctic regions would rise about 8 degrees or 9 degrees Celsius, if the carbonic acid increased 2.5 to 3 times its present value. In order to get the temperature of the ice age between the 40th and 50th parallels, the carbonic acid [now called carbon dioxide] in the air should sink to 0.62 to 0.55 of present value (lowering the temperature 4 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius). Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/6995/

You might like to check out Paul Sheehan’s opinion article at the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote an overview of the book Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer. His article is titled Beware the climate of conformity. Here’s the link: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/beware-the-climate-of-conformity-20090412-a3ya.html?page=-1 If you read Sheehan’s piece, you’ll see that Plimer says we are still in an ice age and are on the way out.

One last thought: In 2008, Nobel laureate economists who gathered for Copenhagen Consensus found that even large-scale carbon cuts would make a very poor investment – and prove an ineffective, very expensive way to rein in temperatures. Put me in the Bjorn Lomborg camp.

There is a smarter policy option that would actually do more to fight off global warming: ensuring that reasonably priced alternative energy technologies will be available within the next 20 to 40 years. We can achieve this if all countries committed themselves to spending 0.05% of GDP on research and development of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. The cost – a relatively minor $25bn a year – would be much lower than the massive carbon emission reductions proposed by Copenhagen summit participants, yet it would do more to fight global warming. (source: “How to save the world in Copenhagen)“

I remember when we were worried about ‘the next ice age’ too. How things have changed as the science has improved! The term ‘global warming’ is causing we environmentalists in the UK problems though. We just had the coldest winter in 18 years, so the tabloid press are all ‘global warming, my arse’ (apologies for Brit colloquialism). Of course there is the underlying warming trend behind everything else that is happening, but to get Joe Public on board it’s being debated whether we should just use the term ‘climate change’, or ‘climate chaos’, or something that lets people know ‘things are changing and it is our fault, guys’.

And while I’m debating about terms and names, even ‘Earth Day’ is slightly misleading. Whatever we do, the planet Earth will survive. It’s the human race who may not.

On that cheery note…
K